Halloween: Remember That You Are Mortal

I will be glad to get to this weekend. I will be glad not to have to explain the skeletons in the grocery store to my four-year-old anymore.

Does Albertsons’ really think I want to have to explain corpses to preschoolers every week?

On the upside, I think I understand the urge to celebrate Halloween better than I have before, due to Bess’ persistent “why?”’s, as in: “why do they hang up pretend dead bodies next to the eggs and cheese?”

My answer, which surprised me, is, “Because they’re scared of death, and this makes them feel better about it.”

True, I think.

Surely the other great motive is our love of indulgence. Most people would tell you that Halloween is a day about candy. And, well, as an American myself, I understand the urge to stuff my face. (As a Christian, I am fighting it, but I do very much understand.)

But surely, if it were just about candy, we wouldn’t need all the ghastlies and ghoulies. Why do my neighbors, otherwise very nice people, feel the urge to hang horrors from their porches? Why are they happy to decorate with foulness that makes me avert my eyes in disgust?

I think it must be an attempt at inoculation. Maybe seeing all the fake gore can help comfort you into believing that real gore doesn’t exist. If you expose yourself over and over to corpses made of paper and plastic, maybe that becomes to you what a dead body is, and you can ignore the future dead body you’re currently inhabiting.

I think, as a Christian, my dislike of all this fake death is actually a sign of a healthy understanding of real death. In my experience, people who deal with real death are much healthier, happier and heartier than those who feel the need to boogeyman themselves to – hmm – death.

Two things: first, when I see a skeleton, all dressed up in a tattered cape, arms raised in a frightening gesture, I think, “what a sad thing to do to the remains of someone who used to be your friend, your family member, your neighbor.” That isn’t how we ought to treat dead bodies, you know? Dead bodies are the earthly remains of people. Costuming skeletons seems to me, firstly, disrespectful. I think all of these skeletons hanging around this time of year show a forgetfulness of what skeletons actually are. Not ghoulies, not ghosties, but just plain, honest, human remains. (And you too will be one one day. Perhaps soon.)

Secondly, the skeleton is just part of the person. The soul lives on, and, for the redeemed, will be reunited with a new body, one that never will decompose till all that remains is the bones. We respect human remains, because they are what used to be our neighbors. But we don’t regard them with fear, because they are not our neighbors anymore. They are not some odd, haunted object. The part of them that was human, well, what’s to fear about our brothers? The part of them that’s not human – because the animating spirit is gone – well, what’s to fear about an inanimate object? But, either way, they ought not to be hung out for the purposes of being nervously laughed at.

So, I find it distasteful, I think, because I view death differently than a lot of my neighbors. Sure, I’m scared of it, I think everybody is. I’ve never died before, and new experiences are always scary. I (sinfully) worry about those I will leave behind. I'm scared of how much it will hurt. But I know what’s waiting at the other side, I know Who is waiting, and though I fear Him in a way I fear no one else, I know Him in a way I know no one else, and trust Him in a way no one else deserves to be trusted.

And I know He beat death. Hanging out skeletons seems to me to be a weak option when I can contemplate the cross instead. Here is where death met its death. Here is where the horror of the grave was really confronted. Here is where Hell was harrowed. Here is my memento mori. Here is the vision of terror, and the One who was more Terrifying than the final terror, that I wish to hold before my eyes, now and always.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell